Tibetan activist at a Free Tibet protest rally in Taipei, Taiwan.
Renowned combat photographer Robert Capa once said “if your photos aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough”. Making your subject bigger by getting closer is a surefire way to improve your photos. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a person, a waterfall or a hungry lion, the more the subject appears to fill the frame, the greater the drama the viewer senses.
Filling the frame is all about eliminating anything not essential to the subject being photographed. When it’s a person, such as in the photo above, we need to be close if we want the viewer to read the message on his cheeks and see the facial details. We don’t need to see the people or buildings behind him; in fact, if we were farther away the subject would tend to get “lost” in a sea of people. We want to remove all those distractions and focus all the viewer’s attention on our subject.
One difficulty photographers often run into is that they think they’re filling the frame when they’re not. Sometimes there’s so much going on at a scene that it’s easy to think we are closer than we really are. So try and take a few steps forward, or use a telephoto lens. Before you press the shutter button, glance around the edges of the viewfinder (and remember that most camera viewfinders don’t cover 100% of the view) to see if there any distractions that could be eliminated. If, after doing all this, you get home and find the subject is too small, don’t be afraid to use the crop tool, although this may limit the size you can display the photo at.
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Craig Ferguson Images | Cultural Photography. One of the key aspects of life that we humans identify with is culture. We label people, places and events according to our ideas of what they are, ranging from the broader scale defined by tradition and place down to the small scale subcultures and tribes. Craig Ferguson Images is consistantly creating new visions in the field of cultural photography. From traditional festives and customs to modern, urban subcultures, Craig Ferguson Images is in touch with the changing world. From our base in Taipei, Taiwan we are perfectly positioned at the crossroads of the ancient and the modern.
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All content © 2010 by Cultural photography from Asia | Craig Ferguson Images
Great Post Craig! I like that this man is looking right at you. Very nice.
Thanks Linda.